LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

When Cynicism Prevails, Hope Dies

When cynicism prevails, people turn away from hope. They conclude,
reluctantly, that decency is an unaffordable virtue in today's world.
Many people in the United States are employed but can barely put food
on the table, get their kids educated or pay medical bills. George W.
Bush offers some of these people a way to make ends meet: by
reversing affirmative action.

The shield Bush carries is not simply that of his father and
Cheney. It is also the shield of Reagan. The tradition of
"non-interference" they established promises downwardly mobile white
people, the largest voting bloc in America, full license to do what
they will to improve their economic position relative to that of
people of color. Affirmative action policies designed to reduce
racial discriminations that forced people of color into inescapable
poverty and crime are not simply made redundant in this new order,
they have become ridiculed as absurd ideology. African Americans and
Hispanic youth are marginalized and criminalized to a remarkable new
degree in America. Inner cities are flooded with cocaine and heroin
as the "War on Drugs" loses any pretense of validity. In Texas it
already appears that soon every town will have its very own brand new
prison, from which profits flow and where the almost entirely
Hispanic and African American inmate population turns over rapidly --
into early graves. This new industry will spread all across America,
under a Bush Administration. Don't read his lips. Read between the
lines!

There is nothing new in the disenfranchisement of a sizeable
population group to the advantage of another population group. People
of color make up 20% of the population of the United States. The jobs
they lose under a Bush administration will pay significant dollars to
those who obtain them. The education they lose, as the Christian
Right controls school district after school district, will provide
significant job access to those who receive it. Moreover, a goodly
percentage of impoverished people of color must be quite intelligent.
They did not, after all, sink into poverty primarily as a result of
weak intelligence or incompetence. The major force pushing down upon
them was always the iron hand of discrimination. Many of this group
are tough and resolved. Bush will guarantee that struggling white
income seekers won't have to compete with them on a level playing
field.

Cynicism need not prevail. Most people prefer to act decently --
but not as martyrs. Al Gore can easily elevate the relevance of
decency, if he has the courage and the resolve to do so. He must,
however, challenge corporate greed, indifference and incompetence. If
he limits himself to a really serious focus on health care, he will
win. But when cynicism does prevail, Bush's covert pitch sells -- as
it did for Reagan.

This monstrous message must not be allowed to remain in shadows.
Mainstream media's "unawareness" of it surprises no one. That it
receives only the barest advertisement in the pages of liberal and
progressive journals, however, more than disturbs. Even Mr. Nader
utters no substantial breath about it. Is it because no one perceives
how to respond with effective positive force, with feasible political
strategy? If reluctance to expose ineffectuality is somehow plausible
reasoning, it is nevertheless poor reasoning. It hushes awareness
that a win for Bush creates hard choices for all in America who wish
to look in the mirror and see a moral, white-skinned person looking
back. Shall we identify with suffering peers of color, or enjoy the
substantial benefits of being unstigmatized? Shall we, as others in
history have done, find safety and profit in simply not seeing what
in reality goes down?

Will courageous journalists -- or courageous politicians -- lose
us if they tell the whole truth? Some of us, perhaps, but I think
they have no moral or practical choice. Failing to shed light upon
monstrosity, they play into a vicious strategy of "benign ignorance,"
of denial for gain and institutionalized cynicism. I, for one, shall
vote for the candidate who demonstrably embraces decency as well as
pragmatism. No other has a chance against Mr. Bush. When cynicism
prevails -- he wins.

DAVID WEINER

Austin, Texas

No Use for Truman

As a "politically progressive old timer," I bristle when I see any
praise for President Harry Truman [as contained in recent columns
by Wayne O'Leary]. No matter what few good things that he may
have accomplished, nothing could exonerate him from his
ordering the use of the atomic bomb on Japan or the involvement in
the Korean War.

There must be something terribly wrong with a person who would
dance a jig and say: "Now I've got old Joe where I want him." He was
referring to Joe Stalin of the Soviet Union after using the atomic
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since that time a new word has come
into existence -- omnicide -- world destruction.

Today's news is about the easement of the wartime relations
between North and South Korea (where the US has over 40,000 troops
yet). Harry Truman put the original ones there. Henry Wallace, who
served as Secretary of Agriculture under Franklin Roosevelt, promoted
the parity price, the granary program that cost the government
nothing and brought parity prices to farmers and reasonable costs to
consumers. When he formed the anti-war Progressive Party, I joined.
It was an anti-war, parity price and anti-monopoly party. Truman took
a large amount of the Progressive platform and all the media of the
capitalist establishment and red-baited Wallace.

Did you know these things, Mr. Wayne O'Leary?

RAY TEEPLE

Davenport, Iowa

Testing Mania

As a longtime teacher and an activist against the current
standards and testing mania besetting the schools, I appreciate John
Buell's remarks on the politics of homework in the August 1/15
Progressive Populist. I offer a gloss on his observation that
"leaders in business and politics now invoke educational reform as
the way to ease the transition to a new global economy." The
corporate-politico agenda is to lower expectations of a large segment
of the population, so when there's nothing in "the new global
economy" but minimum wage jobs for the kids who don't pass these
impossible tests (which nobody is allowed to examine), these kids are
told they have nobody to blame but themselves. After all, everybody
has an equal opportunity to take algebra, calculus and prepare for a
bright future in the high tech globalism these goons promise.

I am outspoken in my fight against the "one size fits all"
high-stakes standards and tests. So maybe I shouldn't have been
surprised last weekend when a Vermont State Trooper escorted two
Georgia policemen to my home in rural Vermont. These police say they
are investigating the fact that copies of a secret Georgia test of
elementary children were mailed from Vermont to the media last
spring. Standardistos, the Business Roundtable, governors,
presidential candidates of both parties, have put all their eggs in
the high stakes testing basket, so when security is breached they
threaten dissenters with search warrants, felonies, extradition. The
Standardistos are determined to keep the content of these tests
secret at all costs. I wonder who got these laws passed that make
photocopying a test purporting to measure the reading ability of
young children a crime punishable by a $50,000 fine and five years in
jail. I wonder who paid for two Georgia policemen to make a weekend
jaunt to Vermont.

SUSAN OHANIAN

Charlotte, Vermont

author, One Size Fits Few: The Folly of Educational
Standards

Smash Middle Class Welfare

Your Mexico lobbyists, Rodriguez and Gonzales, make the deceitful
claim that they are in solidarity with African Americans. In fact,
office-cleaning jobs in Los Angeles used to be held by unionized
African Americans. Now, due to the Mexican population explosion,
those jobs are held by cheap-labor Latino immigrants.

And after a decade of dashed hope, it's clear that the US is never
going to get national health insurance unless President Hightower
gives it to us in 2012. We should be working instead to abolish
Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security because middle-class retirees
get $100,000 more from Medicare than they put in, while 700,000
Americans go homeless. If there's not going to be a safety net under
the working poor, we should smash the middle-class welfare state.

Most sincerely,

PATRICK CLIFFORD

Menasha, Wisc.

The Editor Replies: Mexican immigrants also are
unionizing in Los Angeles and elsewhere, particularly when their
immigration status is stabilized. As for smashing middle-class
welfare, middle-income retirees may get back more than they put into
Medicare and Social Security, but those programs are even better
deals for lower-income retirees, while Medicaid is a health program
for the lowest-income families.

Rall's SUV Hatred Cowardly

In response to Ted Rall's article in the 9/1/00 issue concerning
his hatred of SUV's and the drivers of those vehicles:

I believe this sort of behavior qualifies for the adjective
cowardly. He seems to be unwilling to face someone he is about to
harm. Although he is certainly willing to take credit for an act of
(in his mind) rage against the machine, is it only as long as he is
not identified as the specific perpetrator? I didn't read a way to
contact him, in case one of the people he hates might want to ask him
about a certain banana peel.

I certainly would never advocate the drivers of SUV's cut the
brake cables and derailleur cables of the bikes they may see chained
to a light post or in front of a business. Why, you ask, would
someone advocate poor treatment of a bike rider? (Anonymous acts of
rage deserve other anonymous acts of rage, according to Ted Rall's
way of thinking.)

Mr. Rall is displaying a type of personality that I identify as a
bad trait of humanity, those not willing to take credit for the
wrongs they commit and in their minds can justify anything. Hope
things work out in court for him. I know, in my heart, he really
wants to own up for the damages he's caused, or at least those he
brags about. (Oops, I'm sorry, that's sarcasm.)

AL WARNER

Colorado Springs, Colo.

PS: I live in Colorado Springs, the rightwing armpit of America
and have never voted Republican and never will.

Are The Greens All There?

I am lucky to live in a congressional district represented by
Maurice Hinchey, a progressive, populist Democrat. (He's even in
favor of a single payer health plan.) Our New York State Senator is
equally enlightened. Now I hear that the Greens are planning to run
their own candidate against both of these liberal Democrats. When
asked why, they respond "We have to build a party!." When someone
points out that their candidate might just draw enough votes to elect
a Republican, they respond, "We'll just have to take that chance."
This does not make sense to me, and it would seem that Mr. Nader
should discourage this type of action if he wants to retain the
goodwill of Democrats. They could very well endorse these two liberal
candidates and encourage people to vote the Green line, and build
their party in that manner.

I have been suspicious of Mr. Nader since he told Jock Yablonsky
that if he ran for the President of the United Mine Workers [in
1969] they wouldn't dare harm him. (They killed him.) He has been
dangerously naive in the past and still is. On the other hand he is a
revolutionary, not a reformer. That belief system says that the
quickest way to bring about revolutionary change is to bring the
issue to crisis.

As to Dubya, you may have seen seen this: The state of Texas,
under the leadership of Governor George W. Bush, is ranked:

50th in spending for teachers' salaries

49th in spending on the environment

48th in per-capita funding for public health

47th in delivery of social services

42nd in child-support collections

41st in per-capita spending on public education And ...

5th in percentage of population living in poverty

1st in air pollution

1st in water pollution

1st in percentage of poor working parents without insurance

1st in percentage of children without health insurance

1st in executions (avg. 1 every 2 weeks for Bush's 5 years)

Just think of what Bush could do for the country if he were
president!

JEROME TAUB

Lake Hill, NY

Email jtaub@mindspring.com

Nader Can be Elected

Over and over, we have been told that people who are poor or near
poor vastly outnumber those who are well off. Rich or poor, we all
have only one vote. Those who won't vote for Nader are divided
between:

1. Republicans

2. Democrats

3. Minor candidates

So ... if we can motivate even half of those who are poor, near
poor or people of conscience to:

A. Get registered to vote, if not already.

B. Go to the polls on election day

C. Use absentee ballots if going to the polls is not
practical.

We can pull off a Jesse Ventura for Ralph Nader, People Over
Profits.

LENDRUM A. MacEACHRON

Minneapolis, Minn.

How We Can Elect Ralph Nader

Again we have a very lucky break. A very enthusiastic Nader
supporter, Ralph Cole, will supply a video for $3 or 5, dependent on
the length. You can order by phone at 213-747-6345 and order several.
Then hold a video party inviting neighbors and friends to see it.
They will be excited, both by the introduction and Nader's talk. Then
describe how he can be elected by their showing the video to their
neighbors and friends, and they in turn show it to their neighbors
and friends, and so on. That way we get around the refusal to debate
with Nader. Have voter registration forms. In the 1996 election only
half of the registered people voted because of the widespread disgust
with the two parties. And 38% didn't even bother to register. Clinton
won by getting 24.1% of those registered. If we could get half of the
unregistered to register, they would vote for Nader. Most of the half
who were registered and didn't vote would vote for Nader. In short,
Nader can and must win. ...

CARL GEISER

Corvallis, Ore.

Editor Notes:Cole offers a selection of Nader tapes,
including a 2-hour video with speeches by Nader, Jim Hightower and
Helen Caldicott as well as his controversial TV ad for $5 each;
Nader's Acceptance Speech from the Denver Green convention with
intros by Hightower and Ronnie Dugger for $5; a 6-hour video with 2
speeches by Winona LaDuke, plus the Seattle Debate on Globalization
with Ralph Nader and others for $10; and two 8-hour videos of the
Denver convention with dozens of speakers at $10 per tape. Bulk
prices are $2-$5 per tape.

Oil's Well that Ends Well

Dick Cheney for Vice President? Apparently, one right-wing Texas
oil company executive wasn't enough for the Republican Party! The GOP
has just given us the first "All Oil Ticket" in American history.
Well, isn't that special! At least Texaco will be pleased.

When George Bush Jr. (aka "Daddy's Little Trojan Horse) loses in
November, who will the Republicans nominate in 2004? Jeb Bush? Neil
Bush? George P. Bush? Any other Bush boys in the bullpen?

Just say no to gas gouging, environmental destruction, and the
Republican aristocracy. Say yes to democracy! Lick Bush!

JAKE PICKERING

Eureka, Calif.

Feeling Guilty?

In this day of group guilt wherein all citizens are charged with
the sins of their governments and with corporations formulating
public policy and moral values, I have an idea: a world-wide moral
register where a citizen of any country could admit to political
impotency but publicly identify himself and post his moral opposition
to specific government actions or policy. For example, in the US,
disapproval of embargoes imposed against countries, capital
punishment, WTO, Waco, Ruby Ridge, specific foreign/ domestic
policies, etc.

MELVIN D. THOMAS

Fallbrook, Calif.

Stockholders Like Big Business

The liberal election strategy that has attempted maintain their
base by attacking "Big Business" is showing its age. The last
statistic regarding ownership of "Big Business" showed that more than
50% of Americans now own stock in the securities markets. These
stockholders might just resent the liberal diatribes against their
companies and vote accordingly.

Another antiquated liberal technique that attempts to create
division by an endless assault on the rich (acronym for whitie) is
also falling flat. Thanks to the individual efforts of millions of
African Americans and other minorities they are now part of the
affluent middle class, and hold a large share in the stock market.
They are tired of being associated with poverty, taken for granted,
and might just reject the liberals at the polls.

DON W. VEATCH

Shreveport, La.

Editor Replies:According to the Economic Policy
Institute, in the State of Working America
2000-2001, less than half of households hold stock in any
form, including mutual funds and 401(k)&endash;style pension plans.
The same data reveal that 64% of households have stock holdings worth
$5,000 or less. Household debt is up dramatically, however.